More than you might ever want to know about the history of telephone service in Atlanta. I couldn't find out what the D might have meant, or whether it was even a phone number in 1938, but I did learn about East Point's "FAirfax" and its later conversion to "POplar 7" in 1955 (hence the number that appears as 767 and later as PO7--its the same thing).
http://home.speedfactory.net/cardwell/
Info on the history of the East Point office can be found here: http://home.speedfactory.net/cardwell/offices_atlanta.html#EASTPOINT
29 December 2007
28 December 2007
more baby congrats
Yet another 2007 baby has arrived!
Congrats go out to Lynne C., who I hear has a new grandson named Liam :)
Congrats go out to Lynne C., who I hear has a new grandson named Liam :)
malodorous mystery
You might remember our recent post on our new rugs.
Keeping this in mind, read on...
We arrived home late Wednesday night, after several days of traveling all over the state to visit family for Christmas. After unloading the car, we start to get ready for bed. We were sitting on the bed, looking at an old Better Homes & Garden magazine (from 1935) that Anita and Robert (my sis and brother-in-law) gave us.
"Do you smell something?" I asked B.
"It smells like something...rotting," B responds.
"Like something...dead," I say.
We look at each other...and I head to the living room.
"You are not deserting me!" B shouts.
I put my magazine on the coffee table and return.
B looks under the bed.
"Smells like it's coming from your side," he decides, like this could possibly be my fault. (Could it?)
We gather our composure, get the flashlights, and begin to pull the underbed boxes out, wondering if Gecko has finally done something cat-like and caught a mouse...which leads to other bad thoughts like, "We might have mice?"
Flashlights show nothing. We move the bed, first away from the wall, then to the right, then the left. Nothing. No squished rodents. No cat throw-up (another worry). Nothing.
"Could it be coming from...the basement?" we wonder.
Thoughts run through our minds...of a lone burglar caught in a broken basement window and trapped (we watch too much tv)...various intruders of the rodent variety that got in but not out...
We put on jackets and shoes and head down the back stairs. The windows look fine, the garage undisturbed. We enter the outer basement...seems okay. We enter the main part of the basement, still okay. We slowly open the door to the crawlspace basement, which is under our bedroom. And...nothing. Smells fine.
We go back upstairs, the smell is fading, almost undetectable now. We leave the bedskirt pulled up and the boxes out.
"If anything else unexplained happens, we call the police and go to a hotel, right?" I ask. I don't need to see blood running down the walls before I get the idea that the house wants us out.
--
It's been two days now and nothing. Current thought is that it's simply our new rug. We let it "breathe" on the front porch for a whole day before we installed it, but are guessing that the combination of plastic underbed boxes, new carpet, and bedskirt trapping it while we were away (and the thermostat was turned down, keeping air from circulating as much as usual) created such a foul smell. The carpet itself just smells plastic-y. Turns out it's olefin, which is polypropelyne, and made from petroleum. We couldn't have bought a less "green" rug, apparently. Unfortunately, we can't afford a wool rug that size, so we'll keep it unless it continues to present problems. I couldn't find anything that said olefin fumes were dangerous, but it can't be terribly healthy, either.
I'll take olefin fumes over something dead, any day, however.
Keeping this in mind, read on...
We arrived home late Wednesday night, after several days of traveling all over the state to visit family for Christmas. After unloading the car, we start to get ready for bed. We were sitting on the bed, looking at an old Better Homes & Garden magazine (from 1935) that Anita and Robert (my sis and brother-in-law) gave us.
"Do you smell something?" I asked B.
"It smells like something...rotting," B responds.
"Like something...dead," I say.
We look at each other...and I head to the living room.
"You are not deserting me!" B shouts.
I put my magazine on the coffee table and return.
B looks under the bed.
"Smells like it's coming from your side," he decides, like this could possibly be my fault. (Could it?)
We gather our composure, get the flashlights, and begin to pull the underbed boxes out, wondering if Gecko has finally done something cat-like and caught a mouse...which leads to other bad thoughts like, "We might have mice?"
Flashlights show nothing. We move the bed, first away from the wall, then to the right, then the left. Nothing. No squished rodents. No cat throw-up (another worry). Nothing.
"Could it be coming from...the basement?" we wonder.
Thoughts run through our minds...of a lone burglar caught in a broken basement window and trapped (we watch too much tv)...various intruders of the rodent variety that got in but not out...
We put on jackets and shoes and head down the back stairs. The windows look fine, the garage undisturbed. We enter the outer basement...seems okay. We enter the main part of the basement, still okay. We slowly open the door to the crawlspace basement, which is under our bedroom. And...nothing. Smells fine.
We go back upstairs, the smell is fading, almost undetectable now. We leave the bedskirt pulled up and the boxes out.
"If anything else unexplained happens, we call the police and go to a hotel, right?" I ask. I don't need to see blood running down the walls before I get the idea that the house wants us out.
--
It's been two days now and nothing. Current thought is that it's simply our new rug. We let it "breathe" on the front porch for a whole day before we installed it, but are guessing that the combination of plastic underbed boxes, new carpet, and bedskirt trapping it while we were away (and the thermostat was turned down, keeping air from circulating as much as usual) created such a foul smell. The carpet itself just smells plastic-y. Turns out it's olefin, which is polypropelyne, and made from petroleum. We couldn't have bought a less "green" rug, apparently. Unfortunately, we can't afford a wool rug that size, so we'll keep it unless it continues to present problems. I couldn't find anything that said olefin fumes were dangerous, but it can't be terribly healthy, either.
I'll take olefin fumes over something dead, any day, however.
visit to the historical society
After reading a post on ThirteenEleven's blog about checking the old city directories for the names of previous owners and residents, I slapped myself on the forehead for not thinking of it myself. All those times I had to go to Special Collections and look up names and streets for library reference by email, and it didn't even occur to me to check for our own house!
So yesterday, B and I finally headed over to the East Point Historical Society. They had lots of great photos and mementos of old East Point, showing it to have once been a much more happening place. We discovered that when MARTA was added, Main St. was widened and took out several houses. In other parts of East Point, there were lots of photos of gorgeous old Victorians demolished in the name of progress.
The very helpful gentleman at the Historical Society helped us find our our street address before the numbering system changed in 1961. Our house was number 126 at one point, and the whole street was known as -- Ave...now it seems to be half St. and half Ave. He showed us the Sanborn fire maps from 1925 to the 1940s (one map book, with additions pasted in over the years) and it looks like our house was originally on one piece of property that also included the houses on either side of us. Not sure if that just means they were owned by one person and later divided with new property lines as they were sold off, or if members of one family lived in all three to begin with, but that seems unlikely. We also saw the plat drawings and advertisements for lots in Colonial Hills, which were in the $500-800 range.
I've posted the rest of the info we found in a box in the right column named "Bungalow Timeline." They didn't have a complete collection of Atlanta Suburban City Directories, so I hope to find more information next time I go to the Decatur Library (assuming they have Suburban and not just City directories...).
So yesterday, B and I finally headed over to the East Point Historical Society. They had lots of great photos and mementos of old East Point, showing it to have once been a much more happening place. We discovered that when MARTA was added, Main St. was widened and took out several houses. In other parts of East Point, there were lots of photos of gorgeous old Victorians demolished in the name of progress.
The very helpful gentleman at the Historical Society helped us find our our street address before the numbering system changed in 1961. Our house was number 126 at one point, and the whole street was known as -- Ave...now it seems to be half St. and half Ave. He showed us the Sanborn fire maps from 1925 to the 1940s (one map book, with additions pasted in over the years) and it looks like our house was originally on one piece of property that also included the houses on either side of us. Not sure if that just means they were owned by one person and later divided with new property lines as they were sold off, or if members of one family lived in all three to begin with, but that seems unlikely. We also saw the plat drawings and advertisements for lots in Colonial Hills, which were in the $500-800 range.
I've posted the rest of the info we found in a box in the right column named "Bungalow Timeline." They didn't have a complete collection of Atlanta Suburban City Directories, so I hope to find more information next time I go to the Decatur Library (assuming they have Suburban and not just City directories...).
20 December 2007
global warming
So our camelia bush is finally covered in blooms and is gorgeous. So are our pansies and Johnny-jump-ups. And our Christmas cactus. And the Mexican heather. And the gardenia still throws a bloom out from time to time. And the phlox is blooming. And the jade plant. Oh, and so is the geranium...which was still outside until three days ago.
Did I mention it's WINTER...and in the 30s outside this week...?
Did I mention it's WINTER...and in the 30s outside this week...?
19 December 2007
how many levels was that, dante?
Sunday night we attempted to leave the house and drive all the way to Gwinnett Arena for the 99X Mistletoe Jam concert. Yes, it seemed like a good idea when I purchased the tickets. Forgetting how freakin' far away Gwinnett is, and the evil, evil traffic that comes with a sold-out concert, I forked over insane fees to Ticketmaster and bought two tickets.
The concert was supposed to start at 5:30pm with the Silversun Pickups, and then proceed until 11pm or so with The Shins, Silverchair, and Modest Mouse. Around six-ish, we are running across the parking lot trying to at least make it in the door before the Silversun Pickups leave the stage. We managed to hear two and a half songs, including one of their hits, and they sounded GREAT. We complimented ourselves on how good our seats were, noticing that a lot of seats were still empty, and figured they would soon be filled by people who were just stuck in traffic.
Then suddenly, without warning, we plummetted into concert hell.
A row of guys filed in behind us...and a group of three couples filled the seats in front of us. The guys behind us were...screamers. They apparently represented the entire Shins fan club and screamed the entire time The Shins were onstage (at one point, one of the guys behind us actually shouted "I love The Shins!" A girl nearby responded, "So do I!" Turns out he had backstage passes and was trying to hook up. She followed him backstage, but came back alone...) The couples in front of us didn't seem like trouble other than being very suburban, cookie-cutter types. Wanting to sit back and listen to The Shins, the first hint of trouble began when the couples stood up. Between the screamers behind us and the standers in front of us (hence making us stand in order to see), our small section soon became the only people standing in the entire arena other than the people on the floor. I mean, The Shins are not a stand up and scream kind of band. Really.
As if standers and screamers weren't bad enough, one of the standers soon showed signs of being a ditzy drunk blonde. Being ditzy, drunk, or blonde is one thing...being all three is intolerable and should be punished. (I'm blonde so I can say these things.) This girl...wow. She was drunk, dancing, and sloshing beer from the first song. With three hours+ left to go, we started to get worried. Would we have to endure the entire show with the screamers and the standers and the beer slosher? This was too much.
After The Shins left the stage, so did our screamers (see backstage note above). The standers, however, just went on a beer run. We sat out in the walkway for most of Silverchair and had hot dogs for dinner. We went back in after a while, since Brandon liked a few of their older songs, but all in all they were full of themselves, not funny, and kind of sucked. We managed to entertain ourselves for much of the concert by wondering what kind of bartender would sell this obviously very drunk girl another beer, and where she might spill it next. At one point, Brandon grabbed me and pulled me back because she was in the floor leaning over her seat. Turns out she wasn't puking, but everytime she disappeared into the floor we backed up just in case. Guess she just kept dropping stuff that was vastly important and must be found at that very moment. The funniest thing she did was actually fall out of her seat while sitting in it. Even funnier was that the guy she was with didn't even notice and she had to climb back up on her own.
Modest Mouse finally took the stage...as much as I like their cds, in concert they were kind of boring and we ended up leaving two songs before the end of the concert. The screamers left right before us...after Brandon made one of the guys apologize to me for bumping into me for the umpteenth time without noticing. I was hoping we would all be there after the concert so I could inform them that they were possibly the most annoying people I had ever encountered.
But at least we beat the traffic getting out (we are officially old now).
The concert was supposed to start at 5:30pm with the Silversun Pickups, and then proceed until 11pm or so with The Shins, Silverchair, and Modest Mouse. Around six-ish, we are running across the parking lot trying to at least make it in the door before the Silversun Pickups leave the stage. We managed to hear two and a half songs, including one of their hits, and they sounded GREAT. We complimented ourselves on how good our seats were, noticing that a lot of seats were still empty, and figured they would soon be filled by people who were just stuck in traffic.
Then suddenly, without warning, we plummetted into concert hell.
A row of guys filed in behind us...and a group of three couples filled the seats in front of us. The guys behind us were...screamers. They apparently represented the entire Shins fan club and screamed the entire time The Shins were onstage (at one point, one of the guys behind us actually shouted "I love The Shins!" A girl nearby responded, "So do I!" Turns out he had backstage passes and was trying to hook up. She followed him backstage, but came back alone...) The couples in front of us didn't seem like trouble other than being very suburban, cookie-cutter types. Wanting to sit back and listen to The Shins, the first hint of trouble began when the couples stood up. Between the screamers behind us and the standers in front of us (hence making us stand in order to see), our small section soon became the only people standing in the entire arena other than the people on the floor. I mean, The Shins are not a stand up and scream kind of band. Really.
As if standers and screamers weren't bad enough, one of the standers soon showed signs of being a ditzy drunk blonde. Being ditzy, drunk, or blonde is one thing...being all three is intolerable and should be punished. (I'm blonde so I can say these things.) This girl...wow. She was drunk, dancing, and sloshing beer from the first song. With three hours+ left to go, we started to get worried. Would we have to endure the entire show with the screamers and the standers and the beer slosher? This was too much.
After The Shins left the stage, so did our screamers (see backstage note above). The standers, however, just went on a beer run. We sat out in the walkway for most of Silverchair and had hot dogs for dinner. We went back in after a while, since Brandon liked a few of their older songs, but all in all they were full of themselves, not funny, and kind of sucked. We managed to entertain ourselves for much of the concert by wondering what kind of bartender would sell this obviously very drunk girl another beer, and where she might spill it next. At one point, Brandon grabbed me and pulled me back because she was in the floor leaning over her seat. Turns out she wasn't puking, but everytime she disappeared into the floor we backed up just in case. Guess she just kept dropping stuff that was vastly important and must be found at that very moment. The funniest thing she did was actually fall out of her seat while sitting in it. Even funnier was that the guy she was with didn't even notice and she had to climb back up on her own.
Modest Mouse finally took the stage...as much as I like their cds, in concert they were kind of boring and we ended up leaving two songs before the end of the concert. The screamers left right before us...after Brandon made one of the guys apologize to me for bumping into me for the umpteenth time without noticing. I was hoping we would all be there after the concert so I could inform them that they were possibly the most annoying people I had ever encountered.
But at least we beat the traffic getting out (we are officially old now).
18 December 2007
a curse upon you!
To the shameless low-life scum who stole my shopping cart at the DeKalb Farmer's Market today: may your organic Sumatran coffee be bitter, may your preservative-free multigrain bread grow mold, and may your fresh tuna steaks spoil on the way home.
12 December 2007
so apparently...
...getting a tetanus shot can make you feel like crap. feeling better today, but yesterday continued to feel tired and achey, and had a low-grade fever of around 100 degrees. back at work but wishing i'd taken the afternoon off yesterday and gone home to sleep and get better.
crazy when going to the doctor makes you feel worse than you already did :(
crazy when going to the doctor makes you feel worse than you already did :(
11 December 2007
visit to home depot + not being cautious = tetanus shot
I worry about all kinds of stuff, but Brandon is the one who worries about cuts and scrapes, always washing and cleaning and disinfecting whenever he gets one. Me, I'm more of the throw some alcohol or peroxide on it once and move on.
As much as I hate to admit it, perhaps Brandon's method is the smarter one. When we were looking at rugs at Home Depot the other day, I reached up to pull one out of the way and caught my knuckle against the metal bar that holds the rugs in. A tiny scrape, but it was bleeding a little, so I rubbed some hand sanitizer over it and forgot about it til later. Okay, so I totally forgot about it, until I kept hitting it on stuff at work--book bins, books, desks--until it was sore. When I finally took a good look at it again on Sunday (a week after the scrape itself), it was red and sore.
Once I finally reach the point where I realize something is wrong, then I go into semi-panic mode. I'm going to die, it's infected, what if it gets into my bloodstream, etc. So off I go to the doctor's office, where after an hour and a half of waiting, I am at least satisfied by her grateful attitude that I didn't try to fix it myself and that I came in quickly...she even tells me a story about a recent patient with an infected hand that had to be sent immediately to the hospital for surgery because she had let it go so long. Ugh.
Long story short (or short story long?), I ended up with a tetanus shot (tetanus shot, didn't we meet just seven short years ago?) and a prescription for antibiotics, which she left up to me whether or not I want to take them or wait it out another day and see how it goes.
The tetanus shot has left me tired and achey and I would really, really love to curl up on the floor of my office and go to sleep right now like George from "Seinfeld."
As much as I hate to admit it, perhaps Brandon's method is the smarter one. When we were looking at rugs at Home Depot the other day, I reached up to pull one out of the way and caught my knuckle against the metal bar that holds the rugs in. A tiny scrape, but it was bleeding a little, so I rubbed some hand sanitizer over it and forgot about it til later. Okay, so I totally forgot about it, until I kept hitting it on stuff at work--book bins, books, desks--until it was sore. When I finally took a good look at it again on Sunday (a week after the scrape itself), it was red and sore.
Once I finally reach the point where I realize something is wrong, then I go into semi-panic mode. I'm going to die, it's infected, what if it gets into my bloodstream, etc. So off I go to the doctor's office, where after an hour and a half of waiting, I am at least satisfied by her grateful attitude that I didn't try to fix it myself and that I came in quickly...she even tells me a story about a recent patient with an infected hand that had to be sent immediately to the hospital for surgery because she had let it go so long. Ugh.
Long story short (or short story long?), I ended up with a tetanus shot (tetanus shot, didn't we meet just seven short years ago?) and a prescription for antibiotics, which she left up to me whether or not I want to take them or wait it out another day and see how it goes.
The tetanus shot has left me tired and achey and I would really, really love to curl up on the floor of my office and go to sleep right now like George from "Seinfeld."
10 December 2007
05 December 2007
a little bit of christmas, home depot style
Apparently, ours is the kind of neighborhood that you get rocks thrown through your window at 1pm on a weekday, but leave your garage door open all day on a Saturday and no one comes near it. We also got a rebate from Home Depot for our insulation purchase, and it sat in the mailbox for an entire day (the same day, in fact, that we left the garage open by mistake) and no one bothered it.The next day, Sunday, we decided to head to Home Depot to look for a Christmas tree. After debating which is better for the environment, fake or real tree (we never came a clear conclusion--we decided they are both bad), we decided to go with the real tree this year, simply because it's a heck of a lot cheaper...and it's our first year in the house, so a real tree would be nice.
While we were gathering other miscellaneous items, a lady rolled a buggy by..."Hey, I like that rug!" I told Brandon, and headed off to the rug department to find which rug she had
to get a closer look.As you can see from the photos, we decided to get the rug, and another one as well. We moved the current living room rug to the den, and will try to sell the old rug (bicycle oil stain and all) at the next yard sale.
We managed to get a tree, too, but haven't gotten around to decorating yet.
Den, with rug from LR.
Old den rug--not very comfy.
New bedroom rug...looks more blue in person. We bought a 5' x 8' size, but think we need to return it for a larger size. The bed swallows this one.
02 December 2007
how to do eight open houses in less than an hour
Brandon and I noticed that the house next door was having an open house today from 2-5pm, so, curious as to what changes had been made since we viewed it months ago, we walked over to check it out. Turns out they had turned the laundry room into a half bath...a half bath with laundry hookups in it, that is. A half bath with laundry hookups, right off the dining room. Hmm. Well, it is an improvement over the way it was, with the laundry room open between the kitchen and dining room, but it's a little awkward to have your half bath off the dining room. It did save the one huge hall closet, though, so it's not a bad compromise.
While we were there, the agent told us that there were seven other open houses in the neighborhood, and if we visted all eight, we could enter a drawing to win a 27" flat screen tv. Well, who can turn that down? Only catch? The open houses ended in 20 minutes! Could we do it?
We jumped in the car (wishing we'd known sooner in order to make it a walking tour) and headed to the other end of our street. The first house we toured was one of our favorites--a remodeled bungalow with heart pine floors and an open floorplan. One of the next houses we vistited was a natural wood (cedar?) frame home that I'd been curious about ever since we moved to the neighborhood. There are a couple of homes like that in the neighborhood, and they are unlike any others here. We arrived a few minutes before official open house end time, but the agent was already packing up. We're not sure if she'd already turned the lights off, or if they were off during the whole open house. We were welcomed in, and she quickly showed us through the home. The weirdest thing was, there were people--the residents, I assume--asleep in all of the bedrooms! She quietly showed us around, and pointed out the bedrooms but explained that she could not show them because they were being slept in at the moment. Um...okay. There were clothes and belongings everywhere, and dirty pans on the stove. I was told that I could go up the metal circular staircase in the living room and check out the loft space above. Since we've considered doing something similar at our house (and making the attic an office/spare room), I climbed up, expecting to find an empty room. Instead, more belongings and clothing covered the room, and an unmade bed was on one side of the room. The room was dark and it was hard to see the stairs to come back down! This ranks as the strangest home tour we've ever gone on.
We thought we'd made the rounds and gotten to all the houses, but now we think we missed one on the street behind us. No tv for us, I guess :( Too bad, because there were just a handful of folks viewing the homes.
It was nice to see the neighborhood and several different types of homes nearby. We told everyone that we are encouraging our friends to move to East Point and this gives us a better idea of what's on the market in the neighborhood.
Here are links to some of our favorite houses, including two renovated homes and one new home that looked authentically original.
1359 St. Michael Ave., 1482 St. Joseph Ave., and 1530 St. Joseph Ave.
While we were there, the agent told us that there were seven other open houses in the neighborhood, and if we visted all eight, we could enter a drawing to win a 27" flat screen tv. Well, who can turn that down? Only catch? The open houses ended in 20 minutes! Could we do it?
We jumped in the car (wishing we'd known sooner in order to make it a walking tour) and headed to the other end of our street. The first house we toured was one of our favorites--a remodeled bungalow with heart pine floors and an open floorplan. One of the next houses we vistited was a natural wood (cedar?) frame home that I'd been curious about ever since we moved to the neighborhood. There are a couple of homes like that in the neighborhood, and they are unlike any others here. We arrived a few minutes before official open house end time, but the agent was already packing up. We're not sure if she'd already turned the lights off, or if they were off during the whole open house. We were welcomed in, and she quickly showed us through the home. The weirdest thing was, there were people--the residents, I assume--asleep in all of the bedrooms! She quietly showed us around, and pointed out the bedrooms but explained that she could not show them because they were being slept in at the moment. Um...okay. There were clothes and belongings everywhere, and dirty pans on the stove. I was told that I could go up the metal circular staircase in the living room and check out the loft space above. Since we've considered doing something similar at our house (and making the attic an office/spare room), I climbed up, expecting to find an empty room. Instead, more belongings and clothing covered the room, and an unmade bed was on one side of the room. The room was dark and it was hard to see the stairs to come back down! This ranks as the strangest home tour we've ever gone on.
We thought we'd made the rounds and gotten to all the houses, but now we think we missed one on the street behind us. No tv for us, I guess :( Too bad, because there were just a handful of folks viewing the homes.
It was nice to see the neighborhood and several different types of homes nearby. We told everyone that we are encouraging our friends to move to East Point and this gives us a better idea of what's on the market in the neighborhood.
Here are links to some of our favorite houses, including two renovated homes and one new home that looked authentically original.
1359 St. Michael Ave., 1482 St. Joseph Ave., and 1530 St. Joseph Ave.
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